Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Ligo!

Other duties are calling us, so we're behind. But last week was Jani, the Latvian midsummer celebration.

We were lucky enough to finagle an invitation with a friend to celebrate in the Latvian manner, by heading to the countryside with several pounds of meat for the barbecue, several cases of beer, and a desire to generally eat and drink from noon until noon again. Or thereabouts. Above, your correspondents pictured in the traditional flower wreath worn by women named Liga, but often worn by any woman who digs flowers; and the traditional oak wreath worm by mean named Janis, but loaned to your correspondent in order to take his picture with an oak wreath on his head. More about Jani and Ligo in the coming days.

Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?

This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:

In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:

We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar.